DHEC balks at dredging timetable

Mary Carr Mayle and Mary Landers

Wednesday

Jan 12, 2011 at 10:52 AM

South Carolina has issued the first substantive challenge to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' timetable for deepening the Savannah River.In a notice filed Dec. 30, the staff of that state's Department of Health and Environmental Control proposed a denial to the corps' Water Quality Certification application for the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project. The agency had too little time to complete an adequate review by the corps' late January deadline, it said. The corps released its long-awaited study Nov. 16, recommending the river channel be dredged from 42 feet to 47 feet, a depth it cites as most economically beneficial for the nation. It laid out the plans of the local sponsor Georgia Department of Transportation to take on the additional cost of digging to 48 feet, the depth preferred by the Georgia Ports Authority.The 30-pound, double-sided document also details both the environmental impacts of these depths and strategies for lessening those impacts. In its public notice about the proposed denial, the South Carolina agency makes special note of two of those impacts - the degradation of more than 1,000 acres of wetlands and a decrease in oxygen that's planned to be addressed by a giant mechanical bubbler system. But it was the short time allotted to come to a decision - the 60-day public comment period that ends Jan. 25 - that triggered the denial, said DHEC spokesman Thom Berry. DHEC twice asked the corps in writing to extend the time period, to no avail, Berry said. South Carolina cites the federal Clean Water Act under which the certification is sought as the source of a much more lenient one-year time frame in which it must respond."We just did not feel we would have enough time to do the review necessary to come to a decision," Berry said. "It's not an issue of the merits; it's more of a time issue." The corps is working with the agency to resolve the issue, said spokesman Billy Birdwell, who confirmed the agency has "a reasonable time (not to exceed one year) to act on a request for certification."The corps is working cooperatively with (them) to resolve this issue and any other potential water quality concerns the state may have regarding the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project," he said.Birdwell declined to say if the corps plans to appeal the denial, an appeal it would have to make no later than Jan. 14.Because the river is shared between two states, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources has also been asked to prepare a water quality certification for the project. Georgia won't have its certification finished by Jan. 25, either, said Keith Parsons, an environmental compliance specialist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. He's given the corps a verbal assurance that it will eventually receive the certification, but he won't have even a draft finished before the end of February, he said. "It's too big and complex a document to put something together quickly that's going to stand up," he said. But South Carolina's denial didn't sound like it was only about timing to Parsons. "South Carolina is protecting its interests in Charleston," he said. "It's politics for them. There are X number of federal dollars to deepen, and South Carolina is going to play politics to leverage resources to keep its port competitive with Savannah."Whatever the motivation, the denial was discouraging to Georgia Ports Authority Executive Director Curtis Foltz."We are confident that after 11 years of study, the science employed to develop the Environmental Impact Study and mitigation efforts are sound," he said. "It is disappointing that the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control would potentially seek to delay a project of national significance that is critically important to the economies of both South Carolina and Georgia." The deepening review process will continue as scheduled - with the public comment period ending Jan. 25, as previously announced, Birdwell said."The current project schedule will be maintained while potential water quality certification issues are reviewed and resolved," he said.The certification process is a "key component" of the Clean Water Act, said Chris DeScherer of the Southern Environmental Law Center. "It gives states the ability to weigh in and determine whether a proposed project or license will comply with that state's water quality standards."However, its use in blocking a harbor deepening has been challenged. On the same day that harbor deepening documents were released here, a U.S. District Court in Delaware ruled that state's water quality certification was not necessary for deepening to proceed on the Delaware River. The project will benefit the Port of Philadelphia.

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